<p>I'm kinda becoming obsessed with this stufff, like whether or not I made the right choice. I find the material really interesting, but I only know of a few other people in OM, the rest are all accounting, finance, and econ for the most part.</p>
<p>Did I pick a lousy major or something? I find it challenging and interesting, and I heard the job outlook is really good right now.</p>
<p>Can anyone fill me in?</p>
<p>If you're happy with the material and the outlook, then why not stick with it? Way too many people simply follow whatever the herd is doing; do your own thing and excel at it, and you'll probably end up in better shape than most of your herd-following peers.</p>
<p>The fact that many people do not want to go into operations means that those who do can enjoy higher wages (than they would if it was a "highly desireable" line of work).</p>
<p>If you enjoy it, who cares if others enjoy it or not. More CEOs of fortune 500s come from the operations side of the business than from marketing or finance.</p>
<p>if you like it, go ahead and do it. one is best at what one is interested in.
but yes, it if not as lucrative as some other fields of business.</p>
<p>your Wal-Mart local manager, for example, is a part of Operations Management. so is basically every middle manager in middle America. it is a job where (for the most part of your 20's at least) you get paid a decent wage doing a decent job for a decent company. it ain't Wall Street and never will be.</p>
<p>however, it might be a dramatically different picture if you are doing overseas operations management. the stipends can be quite lucrative.</p>
<p>its hard for me to understand why operations isn't attractive, I mean, you get to be involved in the process of MAKING something. its so much more tangible than accounting or finance. and i wouldn't consider it a soft skill, i mean, there's quite a bit of math and statistics, just as much as finance in my experience. would you guys agree? i guess when you hear the word "management" in a title, you kinda get a little suspect about it.</p>
<p>anyway, like you said, I guess its just about people having the impression that they'll make the most money in finance and accounting. I would agree, they probably have the POTENTIAL to earn a lot in those parts of the business, but I've also heard that there are very few positions in accounting and finance where a person is really making the BIG bucks. most people don't end up on wall street or in a big 4 firm.</p>
<p>It kind of makes me cringe to think of myself as a manager at Walmart though, I hope that's not how things work out for me. I kinda thought most people in operations end up in manufacturing? I hope I do, I mean, I know they work in the service industry as well, but manufacturing is what interests me more.</p>
<p>sure, manufacturing is very tangible, and you do get a sense of accomplishment from making real stuff. </p>
<p>my rough and unenlightened impression is that manufacturing is on the decline, and they haven't been able to recruit kids from top schools for a long time now. but unfortunately some people would claim that working for say, John Deere is not much better than working for Wal-Mart. in fact, Carnegie Mellon is seen as particularly a school where the kids are willing to work in industry and industry can actually get kids, to give an example. </p>
<p>you get the wrong impression about finance. the structure is the industry is sharply segregated and recruitment follows the same pattern. a lesser school with a business program tends to place strongly into accounting precisely because it cannot place into the more lucrative fields of banking and consulting, essential Ivy, Little Ivy, and other T20 schools' preserves.</p>
<p>it's really quite easy to understand. take this anecdote:
if you get an offer from both Goldman Sachs and General Electric, which would you pick?
If you get an offer from both PriceWaterhouseCoopers and say, Otis Elevators, where would you go?</p>
<p>not saying one should choose one over the other, just saying that one could understand how most people would make the choice if given the options.</p>
<p>yea, i understand, I agree</p>
<p>thanks for the feedback</p>
<p>There's nothing wrong with operations management. In fact, it was probably one of my favorite classes (and the most difficult), combining the quantitative elements of stats and industrial engineering with qualitative elements of strategy. It's just not considered very glamorous. Managing a supply chain, conducting quality control, placing orders to maintain safety stock inventory, doing process analysis for a manufacturing plant, etc. may be interesting topics to learn in class but are not what most people think of when they want to do business. I guess there's a negative "factory" image in people's minds. However, if you like it, you should definitely consider it.</p>
<p>yea, i think they really give kids the impression that its all about working in a factory, id definitely agree with that.</p>
<p>
[quote]
if you get an offer from both Goldman Sachs and General Electric, which would you pick?
If you get an offer from both PriceWaterhouseCoopers and say, Otis Elevators, where would you go?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ok, but what if you get an offer from both Goldman Sachs and McKinsey? McKinsey does work in operations. What if you get an offer from PWC and Booze Allen Hamilton? There are very lucrative consulting jobs in the realm of operations.</p>
<p>
[quote]
my rough and unenlightened impression is that manufacturing is on the decline,
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Given the current state of the global economy, distribution is more important than ever. That is operations.</p>
<p>Booze Allen and McKinsey aren't operations, Vector, they are operations consulting. they do not, do not, manage the actual operation of a particular business. they simply draw up plans and provide advice as to the nature and methods of the said operation. they would never get involved with actual management: that would be a gross waste of resources as those are all Ivy Leaguers and to lock them up with a particular industry would be under-utilizing the smartest brains in the country and putting them to mundane, repetitive management tasks in industry. consulting, like i-banking and corporate law, are one-off jobs where you get on a project for a few weeks or months and then move on. real management operations of the sort indicated by the OP, as in working in the industry, is as far from it as it gets.</p>
<p>i am not attacking operations: i am simply stating the facts to someone who seems to have a fairly shaky grasp of the actual economics of the business job market. you seem to want to turn this into some sort of moral debate. it isn't. the fact is, i know plenty of rich bankers and rich corporate lawyers and rich consultants: i have yet to meet any middle manager driving a maserati or a range rover.</p>
<p>I'm sure there are plenty of middle managers who could afford a range rover--that is, if they actually wanted something so hideous in their driveway.</p>
<p>As for the Maserati, that's a different story entirely.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Booze Allen and McKinsey aren't operations, Vector, they are operations consulting.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is a contradictory statement if I've ever seen one.</p>
<p>
[quote]
they simply draw up plans and provide advice as to the nature and methods of the said operation.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>*** do you think operations is ? </p>
<p>
[quote]
real management operations of the sort indicated by the OP, as in working in the industry, is as far from it as it gets.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The OP indicated nothing of the sort. He said that he was obsessed with operations and wondered why more people didn't major in OM. You won't get any more operations expertise than you would doing strategy consulting in operations. Obviously, these jobs are not as easy to come by but that is no different than any top job.</p>
<p>
[quote]
i have yet to meet any middle manager driving a maserati
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Actually, I have. BTW, not everyone that works for a large fortune 500 stays in middle management. Furthermore, most people in accounting/finance end up in typical corporate finance jobs which are no different than what you are referring to.</p>
<p>Regardless, one doesn't have to go into middle management to have a successful career in operations. One can go into operations consulting.</p>
<p>yeah, that's kinda what I thought too, that an operations management degree doesn't simply mean you become an operations manager. honestly, consulting is one of the things I would like to try to get into eventually, but I know I'll probably need a masters degree in that (I'd like to do OR). </p>
<p>Thanks for the replies, and thanks for looking out Vector. </p>
<p>Feel free if anyone has anything else.</p>
<p>what is difference between operation management and operation research</p>
<p>OR seems to focus exclusively on the mathematical modeling, while OM focuses more on the business side of things, although there is some modeling with things like linear programming.</p>
<p>Haven't seen any middle managers driving Maseratis, huh? All that tells me is that you haven't worked in a large manufacturing company. I had a middle manager at one of my former manufacturing companies criticized for driving a Ferrari Spyder to work. (The criticism came from the union boss--since it was an airspace firm and the union, which was the UAW--also does the work for most of the domestic car firms, like GM and Ford).</p>
<p>Fact is, most of the middle managers at that place were making a lot of money and great bonuses and could have driven very nice cars--but didn't want the lower-level manufacturing people "keying" their cars in the parking lot since they weren't union-made.</p>
<p>As far as things go, let's talk about manufacturing in a high-tech environment--anyone heard of Dell, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, etc.--all of which are manufacturing firms--and all of which made their middle managers rich with their stock options. Many of these people could have driven Maseratis, or Bentleys, or even Bugatis if they wanted, but you don't usually drive these kinds of cars to work--and especially not if everyone else you work with also is making high 6 to low 7 figure salaries.</p>
<p>When I got my MBA from UCLA in Operations Management with a Computer science minor, I was the only one with that particular combination of majors--and only 1 of 6 people who majored in Operations Management at all that year. Back then, supply chain and logistics and advanced ERP systems like Oracle and SAP and robotics and AI and AGV and automated warehouses and kanban were all new topics. Now they are all passe--but not because no one is concerned with them, but rather because the field has matured--and is no longer considered to be solely the domain of someone who wants to go work on the factory floor. Yes, there are management consultants who specialize in operations--and yes, they are just as much operations people as people who do manufacturing on the line. After all, there are management consultants who specialize in finance or accounting or marketing or IT and many other fields;--are you going to tell me that you wouldn't count them as financial analysts, accountants, sales people, or computer experts merely because they have a consulting title?</p>
<p>P.S. By the way, Wal-Mart does some logistics, which is operations--but for the most part they are a retail firm. And, it should be noted, the people at Wal-Mart that do the logistics piece are the best paid people who work for the company aside from the owners. Wal-Mart probably has more computers handling more logistics than either NASA or the CIA.</p>
<p>thanks for the informative post man!!</p>
<p>why do you think it is you were only 1 of 6 people who majored in om that year, calCruzer?</p>